Hope Deferred - Salvation TV 2017 Post Ep 9
by 27th Protector
Summary: Post Episode 9, after Darius loses the vote and his company, after he almost loses Grace. (Darius Grace) Nothing inapropro ;) PLEASE leave feedback- this is my first story on fanfic Point of view varies from Darius to Grace. Liam and Jillian will be third person. I will finish the series-


_"I realized that I would rather be here, with the world about to end, with no company, with no hope, and with no money if it means that I get to be here with you."_

 _Darius Tanz_

AFTER Episode 9

DARIUS

The treehouse was usually the only place I could go when I needed to escape.

But it wasn't my treehouse anymore. There was no place that felt like a sanctuary.

Maybe there shouldn't be a sanctuary anymore. After all, the world was ending.

I was supposed to be stopping that, hoping that Liam could find a way around the government hack of the gravity tracker.

Except for that he would need my equipment, my technology, my company…

None of it was mine anymore.

It felt almost like growing up with my uncle all over again; everything would be on his terms, everything owned by him. My life was always on lease because he thought I was an investment instead of a person.

Now it would be the end of everything. There was no way the government would work with him, especially when he refused to give over the crystal substance needed for the EM drive.

Was the world going to end?

Probably, but at the moment I didn't care about that. I only cared that my world was ending.

Grace would have cursed at me for thinking like that.

Grace.

I stopped walking, feeling a moment of regret that fell heavy. I'd needed a moment to say goodbye to Tess, the one thing I gave up for the company I'd just lost. Even with her husband gone, there was probably too much baggage for us to be together.

Unlike Grace. Because there was less baggage with Grace? Just a huge rocket and uranium I was hiding in my basement, water-boarding rescues, Harris, hiring bodyguards to save her from assassins that might have been hired by Harris, Russia…

Maybe there wasn't less baggage but the hell with it.

I tried her phone again. No answer.

From the moment I had turned around and seen the empty spot where she had been standing I had been worried, regretting that she had to see my confusion, hoping she would understand how I felt. Maybe I was confused, but I didn't care. I needed to talk to her.

I texted the bodyguard minutes ago but hadn't gotten a response.

"What am I paying you for?" I spoke to the phone.

"To…save the world? Maybe? Probably not."

I rolled my eyes, forgetting temporarily that I wasn't alone.

"Liam, I wasn't talking to you. What are you doing here?"

"Came to find you. Jillian got me home, but I figured by tomorrow morning…or this morning…what time is it?"

"11:58," I answered matter-of-factly. "I have two more minutes."

He nodded, looking in the middle distance. He probably didn't know what to say, but being one of the most emotional intellectuals I had ever met, he was still trying to think of something.

"Should I...I'll go, but I just…," he had stalled out. I felt back for him almost as he continued, "What do we do, Darius?"

"I don't know, Liam," I said, feeling a sickening rush of emotion that I was trying to hide. "I know you probably want me to say we aren't going to give up, but I can't."

He lowered his head, hair covering his eyes. "What should I do with the intel? And the files? And—"

"Tell Tess to save it on the rainy day drive. The encryption code is 327- SAL. She'll know what it means. Only you or I will be able to see the files. You have six hours."

Liam nodded. He went to leave, but despite wanting to just be left alone, I called him back.

"And Liam, don't leave the compound alone. I don't know if anyone from the defense department knows that we discovered that we can't adjust the trajectory yet, but if someone knows that we tried and failed, and if they think we'll keep trying, we'll probably be targeted."

"Aren't you already being targeted?"

"Maybe. I'm losing track of all the things other than a meteor that are trying to kill me."

"I'll be careful. I'll make sure Grace knows, too."

I swallowed, fighting regret again. "Liam, I don't know if Grace is ever going to come back. I'm not the CEO anymore and she has no reason…"

I stopped. I almost couldn't say it, but I continued. "She has no reason to ever speak to me again."

GRACE

I had to drive. I put down my glass. I didn't want to drink anymore.

I wanted to go…where would I go?

Was Tanz safe anymore? At all? I didn't know if I even wanted to try. Darius probably didn't want to see me again. He had Tess.

I had lost Zoe. I had lost him. I had lost Harris, even if it was my own trust issues.

I had lost my country, or at least I assumed I had lost if anyone from our government wanted me dead.

I blinked away tears.

And for the first time, I decided that I should forget the tears for now.

"So help us God," I repeated. But God was going to need a little help, or at least some genuine courage from me still, to pull this off. I took a breath, prayed a silent prayer, and then went downstairs.

Despite everything, I needed to know what Darius had planned. And I didn't need to talk to him to figure it out.

I decided to ignore the missed calls from Darius. It would be too awkward to talk to him now. If I'd been less emotional, just waited while he was with Tess, and just talked to him, maybe he wouldn't know I was jealous. Now he knew. Or he could guess.

I'd been rejected too many times. My husband rejected me for other women. Harris rejected me for his screwed up sense of Patriotism. Zoe somehow rejected me because she didn't understand what was at stake. Darius would probably reject me for his childhood sweetheart. And I couldn't even hate him for it. It was too beautiful a story to hate him for it.

I blinked back tears again. My thoughts had distracted me the entire drive, and when they hadn't, I had to deal with the flashbacks of the dream I had the other night that would probably never come true.

I opened the door. I was determined to avoid all of it, if I could only find…

There was a glimpse of a flannel shirt.

"Liam?"

He turned around quickly, as if lost in one of his trances. He focused in, blinking and squinting to see me. Except he also tilted a bit to one side.

"Liam, I need you to tell me…are you drunk?"

"I was…about an hour…ago…Darius was looking for you and—"

"Liam, I don't need to see Darius. I need to see you. What is the plan to make sure that the new CEO or anyone, for that matter, doesn't find out about the launch of the EM drive, or the fact that…"

I trailed off, but Liam finished, "We don't have control over the EM drive and we're the only three people in the world that know that the United States is going to pull another project Atlas?"

A shiver went up my spine. "Is that why Darius' bodyguard followed me all the way here?"

"Probably. He called him twice, apparently. He was looking for you, but I don't think he thought you would come back…for some reason."

I gazed out the glass door, looking at the cart Darius had overthrown earlier.

When I turned to look back at Liam, he was looking at me, calculatingly like he did at the endless numbers on his screen, as if he was trying to analyze where I would go next.

"What?"

"Nothing," he said innocently, but then he bit his lip. "It's just…Darius seemed…worried about you. And…" Liam stood up and put down his keyboard. "Look, I am the last- literally, the last- person to gauge human emotions. I'm much better at tracking asteroids, actually. But… I think you should go talk to him."

"I don't know if that's a good idea, Liam."

"Oh, no. It's not," Liam said with a certainty that scared me. "He's vulnerable. He's an emotional mess. But…you should go see him. You have every reason to if you care about him."

I shook my head. For a geek and a kid, he sure knew how to convict someone to do the right thing.

"Okay. Listen, are you safe here?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "Don't worry. Tess has the doors locked, and I think Darius ordered two more security guys to sit on the roof for now. We'll have to hope that someone believed we just sent pings to the EM drive and not the gravity tracker."

I nodded. He stood there expectedly, slightly hunched over. Maybe it was the idea that I didn't want to crush his expectations, but I believed in a moment that love was as simple as a naïve kid might think it was.

And in that moment, I turned and found the nearest elevator, saying outloud as I headed to it.

"Tess, treehouse."

DARIUS

I heard the doors opened. I blinked rapidly, not there were many tears, but I hardly wanted Liam to worry I was losing it. The poor kid was already afraid of dying.

I picked up my phone again. I cursed.

"Remind me to hire a new bodyguard for you, Liam. Damn, why can't Grace's bodyguard tell me where she is?"

"Maybe because she's so damn unpredictable?"

"Grace?" I said her name, before it felt like it choked my throat.

She was standing only a few yards away. I already know she had to tell how red my eyes were, but I wiped my eyes and face again.

"What are you…you're here."

She rocked back on her feet a moment. She must have felt so awkward. There were more than one reason why, but I didn't take the time to let her explain.

"Grace, I'm so sorry—"

"No, it's okay. Don't be silly," she nodded, but diverted her eyes.

"Grace, you don't understand….what happened today was…what happened today…"

I trailed off. I was furious at myself, but not even Grace or Tess or a meteor could seem worse than what happened today.

"I became nothing today," I finally answered. "What I gave up for this company, who I gave up for this company, are now scars for accomplishing nothing, for gaining nothing. And for so many reasons…you no longer need me."

She closed her eyes and took a long breath. "Darius, I'm here. And yes, I still need you to try to save the world. To try to finish this. I need you to focus on finding a solution. To focus on Salvation if all of this gets ruined or if we die because we're trying to fix it."

Her breath sounded uneven, even as I stared at her eyes as they began to glisten. "And I know I'm going to regret saying this…but I still need you. I'm afraid I might need you…"

She stopped. But I didn't need her to continue. I crossed the distance between us in huge leaps, praying she wouldn't push me away. I clung to her, fighting the tenseness in her shoulders, a reflex against years of rejection that I just added to but was now trying to destroy.

"Grace, I don't know if you need me…since I'm no one now. I don't even feel like Darius Tanz if it's not written on a building that's mine. But the one thing I have been thinking since I've been up here..." I pulled back, cradling her head as I pulled it back so I could see her eyes. "Last month, I had a billion dollar company. And I can't help thinking that if a shoeless geek hadn't have entered an elevator and told me the world was going to end, I'd still be here, planning marketing techniques for releasing the new robotics program or the holographic projector or the next thing I was going to invent. Maybe they would have found someone else to stop Samson from crashing into our world. But I realized…if this problem hadn't found me, I wouldn't have found you. And I realized that I would rather be here, with the world about to end, with no company, with no hope, and with no money if it means that I get to be here with you."

She closed her eyes, leaning in to press her head against mine. I could feel the breath of her gasps against my lips. I stopped breathing, hoping I wouldn't be tempted to kiss her, so instead I just repeated the few words I needed her to understand.

"I'd rather have lost all of it…even my life…if it means I'm with you."

She released a breath, but then didn't gasp again. She opened her eyes, but then slowly closed them again. She whispered, "And I'd rather be with you."

I moved my hands down to graze her lips with my thumb, still cradling her head, my fingers beginning to tangle in her red hair. Every effort in my mind to stop failed me. I hoped she would stop me.

But she leaned in, gasped for air, leaving me breathless.

I had blown the chance to show her I loved her so many times, because she left me so confused.

I had one more chance, and so I took it.

My lips crashed with hers, moving against hers. I cradled her head, moving my hands to the back of her neck. I lingered, even after releasing her from the kiss.

It was funny how constantly being afraid of dying had me appreciating each breath, but not like this.

"Now," I started, "for the worst thing I could say."

"I love you when you don't mean it…that would be the worst thing you could say," she said.

I shook my head, holding hers against mine again, wishing I could drain away her fear of rejection. "No, Grace. I love you. But the worst part is…I don't know if I can save you now."

She moved closer, leaning her head against my shoulder, beginning to breath heavy.

"Grace, I don't know if I can save anyone."


End file.
